France introduces the internet of dog poo

When visiting pretty much any French city, despite the splendorous architecture and the beautiful people, you’ll spend most of your time walking around looking at the ground trying to avoid doggy doo.

France’s commitment to liberté, égalité, fraternity, (liberty, equality, fraternity) has meant that, unlike many other dog-loving countries where man has to follow his best friend around with a plastic bag, Frenchies can take their dogs for walks through any of the beautiful arrondissements and have the freedom not to clean up after them.

But as it is wont to do, here comes the internet with solutions.

A new app called Bye Bye Crottoir – the latter word being a slang French term for a pooey pavement – lets users upload an alert when they see an offending piece of poo.

The alert is then automatically sent to the respective authority, who presumably send out a four-man cleaning team to correct it.

Creator Rémi Tournier said he is hoping to use the technology to beautify the country’s famously dirty pavements for tourists and locals alike.

As with any similar start up, it remains to be seen whether Bye Bye Crottoir gets off the ground (thereby getting the poo off the ground also, gee aren’t I clever?).

It has yet to receive the support of Paris City Hall, and given the snail’s pace of French bureaucracy – remember that bureaucracy is a French word after all – it might not come to fruition until dogs have their own smartphones or develop more intense feelings of shame and start using the toilet.

Anyway, for anyone planning a visit to Paris, we can only hope the app gets some more serious support soon – or the French start carrying plastic bags around like the rest of us.